It’s a good article. There’s questions to be asked about why a thin man had to write it and why did it take a thin man saying things fat people have been saying forever to get people to listen, but I think it’s overall good.

There are also places, however, where the conversation needs to be pushed a little farther, and Huffington Post invited me to write about that in their Opinion section.

Hi friends! Guess who has a short story you can read right now on the internet and guess who is really proud of this story because it’s her first short story sale and also it’s pretty good? And also because it’s ILLUSTRATED by the amazing Galen Dara?

It’s me.

The story is “Crow’s Eye” and I’m super honored for it to be published by the wonderful Fireside Fiction. Go do a read!

You may have noticed I don’t really use this site as a blog anymore. I do keep the writing page and various bits of contact info up to date, but blogging kind of stopped being my priority. I’ve been trying to focus on my writing and reading and working.

Although, the working thing…well.

Since I graduated, I’ve been working temp office jobs. They’ve gone for months at a time and kept me going.

My last one ended in December, and despite many, many applications and a decent amount of interviews, I haven’t been hired anywhere. Going on three months of unemployment has really sucked.

I’m tired of sitting around just doing applications and waiting and waiting to hear if I scored and interview, and then waiting to hear if that interview got me a job. So I’ve added something else to my life.

I don’t expect this to ever replace having a job for me, but I’m hoping it will help throw a little extra cash my way while I’m doing the job hunt. I’ve already got a few generous patrons signed up.

You can start supporting me for as little as $1 a month. For that $1, you’ll get a monthly update on my writing, job hunt, life, and an exclusive cat picture.

These cats.

Bump that up to $2, and you get the monthly update, cat picture, AND a rant about something I find interesting or one of my infamous bad dating stories.

At $3, you start getting exclusive fiction. At $5, exclusive essays. All this, every month.

If you feel really fancy, you can go for upper-tier rewards like personalized tarot readings or a personalized poem.

There’s a lot of options, many ways to support me, and many ways to get original and exclusive content from me, every month.

Another great way to support me is just so share my Patreon! If there’s someone you think might be into it, send a link their way.

Thank you so much for subscribing to this blog and being so awesome. I’ll continue to post updates here when I get things published, but otherwise, please go join me on Twitter or Patreon if you want to be sure to see more of me.

2014. Jackson and I are the only returning interns, so we start calling ourselves Katniss and Peeta. Brittany moves from attendee to fellow intern. I assist Bridget Smith, and delight in telling one man that he was the first and one of two full manuscripts she asked for the whole weekend. Daniel José Older is there, and to this day, if you mention his name around us, we’ll all sigh dreamily and talk excitedly about how his keynote speech kept everyone on the edge of their seats. I’m more confident. People recognize me. People are excited to see me! I’m excited to see them! This internship is quickly becoming about the community almost more than the professional experience.

In 2015, I don’t apply for the internship – I get asked to return, and to lead. I take the agent assistant interns, and Jackson takes the social media counselors. We get to go to a few committee meetings, we get to train our crew, we basically run that shit. The interns are a tight-knit group of nerds. I assist Janet Reid and have a damn good time doing it. Between that and leading I don’t have much time for rest but tbh that’s how I like it. I do the after-partying, I’m comfortable talking to faculty and agents, and I don’t know how I’d survive any of it without Summer as one of my best friends.

You’d think, after all that experience, that I’d go into 2016 all smooth and carefree and ready to take on the day.

Uh, no.

This year, I wasn’t assisting an agent. I was just in charge of a group of interns who were trained in a class taught by MWW’s awesome leader, Jama Kehoe Bigger. I went in thinking I’ll have nothing to do and my interns barely know me at all, what will they think of me? I know how to be a leader, but I felt like now I was seen not as a leader and friend, but a leader and adult and boss and I didn’t know how to be that.

I didn’t know any of the agents. I was nervous as hell to meet Julie Murphy. Brittany and Jackson were going to be there, but for the first time none of us were working in the same area. Summer was going to be there but MWW moved to a much larger space, and I didn’t know how much I’d see her. There was a mix-up with the T-shirt place, and I didn’t get an intern T-shirt – the largest they carried was a 2X and there’s no way that’s fitting me.

My anxiety basically ruled me that first Thursday of MWW16. I didn’t feel in control at all. I didn’t feel like I belonged like I had every other year. The first night, my friends and the 2015 agent assistant interns all get the same frantic message: I think my interns hate me.

To everyone else I probably seemed a-okay, if a little manic. But oh man, I was a mess that first day.

Don’t worry. This isn’t a tragic story. It didn’t stay that way.

It helped, definitely, that while I didn’t have an intern shirt, I did have a tank top that Jackson screensprinted for me. I can’t pretend that having “QUEEN” printed on my back didn’t help the confidence.

Sure, I didn’t see Jackson and Brittany and Summer as much as I wanted – I kind of want to be around them like all the dang time – but I did see them. Any time we all had breaks, we found an empty space and talked and decompressed and had fun.

Maybe, occasionally, too much fun.

I talked to Julie Murphy on multiple occasions and didn’t die at all. I also probably didn’t embarrass myself THAT much! I eventually just calmed down and put the fangirling aside and learned to be a person.

Mostly.

It also didn’t hurt that there was a Pokestop in the Student Center and that, along with Summer, intern Kara Harris, and agent Molly Jaffa, we kept it in lures for most of the weekend. I caught a Scyther on Thursday night and it definitely wasn’t during a time when I should have been paying attention to something else, shut up, it was a SCYTHER, what would YOU have done???

And the interns? They were smart and funny and WAY prepared for their jobs. They handled me emailing them a dozen times each day with pitch requests and schedule changes from attendees, they got to know their agents, they bonded with each other. A few of them have alreadyput upblog postsabout their time at MWW and their desire to return.